Does anyone over the age of 8 actually LIKE Peeps? I don't remember liking them even when I was 8. These vaguely chicken shaped Easter candies come in lurid shades of yellow, pink, and purple and taste like sugar to the 10th power dipped in saccharin and Nutrasweet and whatever that was that used to be in Fresca that was gonna make us sterile when we were teenagers (was it only the girls at Our Lady's High who used Fresca as birth control? but I digress). You get the idea. Peeps are beyond sweet. They redefine sweet.
It's being the Easter season, Kevin brought home Peeps for the girls on Friday night for a treat after our ritual Friday pizza. Peeps after pizza is a bizarre yet alliterative experience. The kids LOVE them. Intrigued I try one and immediately down a glass of water. Curious, Kevin examines the box to see if there is any nutrition information. Amazingly, there is. I am incredulous, especially when he reads "Serving Size: 5 Peeps". Five Peeps! We discuss this for quite some time trying to imagine a scenario that involved eating 5 of these things at one sitting. When I get home from Kevin's, I down a quart of water. I would've given Peeps no further thought but that was not to be.
On Saturday, Nancy and I went to the Blue Diner for lunch. Besides serving breakfast around the clock, and having its own brand of coffee, the Blue Diner turns out to be home of The Greatest Peep Show On Earth! Every year local artists, drunks, and hangers on create art works around Peeps and submit them to the contest judged on Good Friday. The Greatest Peep Show on Earth! Step right up. See MerPeeps, a 2-liter bottle of Peepsi, Blue Peep Group (a particularly lurid shade of blue on the Peeps - it looks much better on Blue Man Group's faces and shaved heads), an icon representing "The Easter Candy Formerly Known as Peep", a Peepaholic and Little Co-Peep stuck together teetering on the edge of a plastic champagne glass, Loch Peep Monster... My favorite was the Christo Peep - a group of five peeps (a single serving!) wrapped in white fabric after the manner of Christo (best known for wrapping bridges, mountains, entire atolls...). It looked remarkably like a Christo work and even came with a flyer announcing it. The winner however, was Peep Smear. You can picture it.
Sunday, we went to Mom's for Easter Dinner and my birthday celebration. The kids arrived bearing three packs of Peeps, one in each color, with a birthday card for dear old Aunt Janet. Each pack contains 3 servings. Picture it. I convince them that I am most grateful for their charming birthday gift and will share it with them after dinner. Bobby calls from Bosnia where it is 7:00 PM and distracts them from their desire to eat the Peeps immediately.
After ratatouille with portabello mushrooms, fresh steamed asparagus, couscous, carrots, green bean/onion casserole, and rack of lamb for the meat eaters, Peeps seemed sort of anticlimactic, but I passed them around to share nonetheless. Nancy had never tasted one before. She says she need not ever taste one again. Eager to get a family picture to send to Bobby before the rain/snow starts I borrowed Elizabeth's pastel sidewalk chalks and wrote "Hi Bob" in huge letters on the front walk and posed the family on the front steps. Lookin' good, family! Back in the house, Thomas decided it would be cool to spell out "Hi Bob" in Peeps but there are not enough left. He spelled it out in jellybeans with Peeps at the ends instead and photographed it with my camera. I reminded him he didn't need red eye reduction for the Peeps. The Peeps used in this endeavor got eaten quickly. Time to go home. There is one package, 3 servings, left. I don't want to hurt the kids' feelings by returning their generous gift.
Finally, I hit upon the perfect solution. I will mail the Peeps to Bosnia! The kids think this is a great idea to get Uncle Bobby in on the festivities. Some of the greatest engineering minds of the Egan family begin to apply themselves to the problem of mailing Peeps to Bosnia without having them end up as Peep Smears. Do you wrap them in bubble wrap? Mark it fragile? Will they still be edible when they get there? Are they edible now?
After I dropped Nancy off at the bus station, I returned home to Wilbur. As I'm sitting in my office petting Wilbur, I notice on the printer stand a used box from Mac Connection that is just about the right size and rigidity for mailing Peeps to Bosnia.
Janet, Cracked Brained Sheep Head of the North
Specializing in Feline Acne, Mailing Peeps to Bosnia, and Whatever All Else